Dramione: WANTED

CHAPTER 33: BE A PUREBLOOD! BENEFITS INCLUDED

CHAPTER 33: BE A PUREBLOOD! BENEFITS INCLUDED

The worst thing about things like this, Draco soon realised, was that no matter what happened, life tended to move on.

Potter was with the She-Weasel, Weasel was with the other Weasels, Pansy was back in her own home, and Blaise was with Astoria. They were all still trying to research, trying to find a way to waker Hermione up, but their lives continued.

Hermione's name had been cleared completely by now, his too. Of course, people being people, had decided that two years' worth of chasing after her was nothing, and that they'd known all along that Hermione wasn't the murderer. The articles about how the Ministry was to blame for it all, or that even the Daily Prophet knew all along that Hermione was innocent, had only made Draco angrier than he already was.

They'd given her two years of hell and now they were blaming everyone else but themselves.

They were all moving on, but he wasn't.

He was stuck. He didn't want to move on...he couldn't. Hermione was still in hospital, her heart still beating, her lungs still breathing, but she was still in a coma. Where else was he supposed to be, but next to her? Waiting, hoping, that she would just wake up and that it would all be alright?

That somehow, someway, he would get to see her smile again.

"Draco? Draco!"

He glanced up at the gathered people before him and scowled at them, squeezing Hermione's fingers in his own to assure her that everything was fine. It was just their idiotic friends. "What do you lot want?" he muttered, looking back at the muggle machines they'd bought in to keep tab on her heart rate.

The four of them, Potter, Weasel and Pansy and Blaise all looked at each other warily, aware that he was already on a short fuse. Just this morning, they'd heard that he'd punched another Healer for asking him to move his hand so that he could check her pulse.

Pansy sighed heavily, the other three with her weren't going to say anything for sure. They might have been war heroes or whatever, but they were cowardly as mice when it came to stuff like this. "How is she doing?" she asked gently, watching the forlorn expression on his face deepen.

"I don't know. I don't understand these muggle machines. The belly-pinion was bad enough...but this is..." he trailed off.

Hermione's heart rate was erratic and unnatural. Sometimes it would even out, and her breathing would return to normal and it would look like she was on the brink of waking up, but just as they would get hopeful, it would return to the way it was before.

Three weeks and nothing changed. Draco didn't leave Hermione's side for more than ten minutes. He barely ate, and barely spoke, but he was still quick to anger, and most of his frustration was to himself.

"If she hadn't...it was aimed at me! Why did she?" he ran a hand through his hair, his form so defeated that even Harry looked affected. Then again, Harry had never seen Draco Malfoy so broken like this before. And the fact that it was because of Hermione...

"Because she loves you." Blaise stated calmly, crossing his arms to stare at his best friend, "that's what people do when they love others. They become willing sacrifices for the sake of the one they love. She didn't want to see you die, so she did what she could to stop it. She saved you. Plus, she's a Gryffindor to boot, that's what they do."

Pansy winced, waiting for Draco to get mad, but the man just stared at Hermione and kept quiet.

A week afterwards, after Pansy managed to convince Draco to take a break, the black-haired woman sat next to Hermione Granger and sighed heavily. Knowing Draco, he would be back in less than two minutes, so she leaned forward and regarded the brunette woman carefully before sighing once more.